D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Filthy Lucre]

One can be offended without displaying a reaction. It can be a valuable survival tool.

Choosing to display offense by complaining usually requires a sense that one can do so with relative safety, or that the offense is so great that it cannot pass unchallenged, whether or not it is safe to do so.

This is gunna be a hot take, (but if you're familiar with me or my reputation that shouldn't be a surprised):

1.) Whether something offends you or not isn't relevent - only whether or not you can do something about it.
2.) Allowing other people to affect you and not cultivating a stoic sense of self is a weakness. There's nothing righteous about being offended by something.
3.) See Stephen Fry on the phrase "that offends me".

 

[Bedrockgames]

In the case of 4e it was CLASSIC gatekeeping. Heck, they drove us clean out of the game!!! "We don't like the way you play and the rules you want to use, they aren't D&D, get out!" It was QUITE CLEAR.

No. That isn't what happened. They made an edition a lot fo people didn't like, and people said why they thought they didn't like it. Then when the hobby got divided around pathfinder and 4E, WOTC made an edition they thought would bring back some of those lost players. Maybe it resulted in a game you didn't want to play. Fair enough. But 4E was a game I didn't want to play. I don't call them making 4E because people were calling for the kinds of changes it had, a form of gatekeeping. An edition came out that I didn't like and I didn't play. No one was forcing anyone out of the hobby. They were battling over what they felt D&D ought to be.

Now the conversations got heated. I can certainly agree with that. But I saw heat coming from all sides everywhere all the time in those discussions.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

. I don't necessarily think that Abdul is entirely wrong, but he is likely not entirely right either as his own experiences respresent a piece in the wider puzzle.

I don’t doubt that he believes this to be true.

But that’s why oral histories can be interesting, but are rarely as persuasive as reliance on primary documents from the time.

People forget. People don’t have perfect recollection. People’s memories change. And even in those circumstances when people, 50 years later, perfectly recall everything - their views are limited. He doesn’t know what was going on in the entirety of the hobby (as is pretty clear).

The amount of roleplaying was so well-established in the 70s that you had a rear-guard action of people fighting against it, and the first four-fold model of player agendas published in 1980 made it clear that there was a divide between gamist and RPers- and it was well established.

In fact, the main argument in the early 80s was that the influx of new young players was too concentrated on optimizing (munchkins) and didn’t grok the grand history of roleplaying.

 

[Filthy Lucre]

I do believe, however, that the comparison in the context of 4e was and still largely is a form of gatekeeping that also extended from a misunderstanding of the video game medium, particularly of MMOs and World of Warcraft. As @Vaalingrade said, the comparison was weaponized for that purpose in the Edition Wars. Nothing is gained from pretending that it wasn't gatekeeping.

I might have confused or mislead you - whenever I comment on something unless I make it explicit that I'm talking about a specific event, I'm just talking about things conceptually, abstractly, or in premise.

This history of gatekeeping or edition warring isn't really something that interests me. I'm sure what you say is true about that specific event.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't think 4E isn't an RPG. So I never said that. But even then, people can have honest disagreements over what makes something an RPG.

And as noted, its not all about you. And telling people they aren't playing people an RPG is absolutely gatekeeping. If it isn't, what is?

 

[Maxperson]

Yet WoW merely shifted the "always evil savage" race trope from Orcs and Trolls to Gnolls, Murlocs, Centaurs and other NPC races existing only to be slaughtered.

And yet there were storylines where you aid the Murlocs as one of them, even going as far as rescuing their young and leading them to safety. And another where you make friends with a clan of centaurs.

And whenever an expansion needs an evil faction doing bad stuff, it's always the Horde that is lead astray, again, by an evil warchief

The Lich King wasn't horde. And the current expansion is not based in either the horde or alliance being at fault(at least that we know so far).

 

[Filthy Lucre]

In the case of 4e it was CLASSIC gatekeeping. Heck, they drove us clean out of the game!!! "We don't like the way you play and the rules you want to use, they aren't D&D, get out!" It was QUITE CLEAR.

That does not sound like gate keeping, that sounds like a definitional dispute. How can you claim that it was an instance of gatekeeping? If that was the case 4e would never have even existed, let alone spawned a sprawling volume of books.

Does this really come down to being upset that people strongly disagreed with the direction D&D went with 4e one way or the other?

 

[Maxperson]

Gatekeeping isn't the same as forum rules. Those rules apply to everyone. Gatekeeping is claiming that only some people are allowed to engage in the whatever or that only some people can be considered true followers of the whatever, because you said so, and only because you said so.

Saying that women can't be real gamers is gatekeeping. Saying that people who prefer to play in a certain way aren't playing real D&D is gatekeeping. Saying that only people who play a particular edition are real gamers is gatekeeping. Saying that people who like a particular class or race aren't real gamers is gatekeeping. Saying that people who don't play a particular RPG aren't real gamers is gatekeeping.

Most of those examples are not gatekeeping. To qualify as gatekeeping it actually has to limit access, not just make a claim. Saying women can't be real gamers is bad, but not gatekeeping. Not allowing women to play your roleplaying game or designing it to be unappealing to women would be gatekeeping.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

3.) See Stephen Fry on the phrase "that offends me".

White male from an extremely privileged background? It's easy for him to be not offended.

 

[Bedrockgames]

And as noted, its not all about you. And telling people they aren't playing people an RPG is absolutely gatekeeping. If it isn't, what is?

My view on the whole 'this isn't an rpg statement': 1) I think these kinds of declarations aren't terribly useful, because usually people are using definition of RPG to advance a playstyle, so I think it is generally a bad argument. 2) But I don't think it is gatekeeping. It is, possibly, a bad faith argument, definitely not a good argument, but a person saying "This edition of this game isn't an RPG" isn't a form of gatekeeping. 3) Gatekeeping is actually pushing people out of the hobby. I think we throw that term around a lot, but by doing so you just water down its meaning. I would reserve gatekeeping to statements like "Girls shouldn't play D&D". If it is opened up to mean statements like "this isn't an RPG" then it really has no power as a term IMO. 4) If someone specifically tells you "No the game you are playing is not an RPG, I think that is a little more frustrating and annoying than if they say "This isn't an RPG to me". I still wouldn't consider it gatekeeping, but I could see how it would get under a persons skin more.